Next to the Paintings
by Kudzu1
Summary: Commander Thrawn of the Galactic Empire leads a crackdown operation against the planet Utapau five years after the end of the Clone Wars, while a reinstated Port Administrator Tion Medon rallies a desperate concerted resistance effort against him.


Next to the Paintings  
By Kudzu

_"True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind"  
_Mahatma Gandhi

"Captain, a word?" the soft voice of Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo issued through the quiet tumult towards him.

The third-generation clone, so called for his activation during the last year of the Clone Wars, turned respectfully towards the alien officer. He met the glowing red eyes of Thrawn - the commander insisted on it, citing its relative ease to pronounce especially when compared to "Mitth'raw'nuruodo" - with his own brown ones and replied, "Certainly, Commander."

He stepped back and away from his quietly conversing company of soldiers, but Thrawn held up a neatly manicured, blue-skinned finger. "Privacy will not be necessary, Captain. I wish only to impress upon you the importance of this mission."

_The importance of this mission to the Empire, or the importance of this mission to you?_ The rebellious thought formed itself in Captain Dij's mind before he could stop it, although he took meticulous care to keep it concealed from the commander's probing eyes. "Yes, sir," he said.

Thrawn canted his long face very slightly to the side and lifted a blue-black eyebrow nearly as subtly. Dij worried for a moment whether Thrawn might have somehow picked up on his thought, and just when he had allayed that worry with the reasoning that certainly even this sophisticated alien couldn't read his mind, he said mildly, "Captain, this mission does not simply carry value for me."

The clone started.

Commander Thrawn continued, "Tion Medon and his people have resisted the Imperial presence for too long. A rebellion is growing. Cells of sympathizers and self-made enemies of the Empire are forming from Rim to Rim. To punish Utapau for its simmering malcontent would be to show not only Medon, but the leaders of many other worlds what the consequences of resisting the Empire's control will be."

"Yes, sir." Dij bowed his head slightly, and then looked back up at the man. "Still, though, sir - it seems as if the raid on the Pau City Museum is an unnecessary side trip from the ultimate purpose of this crackdown."

Thrawn actually seemed to consider this for a moment. The surfaces of his scarlet eyes swirled in a pattern Dij had learned to associate with thoughtfulness, and the lean muscles in his face smoothed out and relaxed. After a moment, he said, "Captain, the mask of General Grievous is an artifact that belongs to the Empire. We liberated Utapau from the Separatists. They were the ones who cooperated with the invasion."

"You suggest, sir, that they should not reap the benefits, as it is?"

"Correct," said Thrawn. "The mask of General Grievous is priceless. Why should it belong to the Utapauns when they played such a small role in defeating him?"

"Sir, if I might ask," Dij hesitated, but went on, "what value does Grievous's mask have to the Empire?"

"Regardless of what side you belonged to, it is impossible to factually deny that General Grievous was one of the most brilliant tacticians in galactic history," the commander replied reasonably. "It will go to the Emperor, as a prize." An unfamiliar expression flitted across his aristocratic face, and he seemed to - just for a moment - cast his eyes down. "It is art in the styling of the Kaleesh. It could provide insight into their way of thinking."

The clone captain was incredulous. Surely Thrawn couldn't be suggesting that…

"Captain," the commander said firmly, again seeming to read his mind. "Art is the essence of one's innermost soul. This mask is a ceremonial crafting, similar to hundreds of others carved and polished for the warlords of Kalee over their species' history. What makes it a symbol of power to them? What makes it inspire awe and terror within their minds?"

"I understand, sir."

"Ah," he responded lightly, "but you do not. Art is a window into the mind. It is up to those who seek to see through it to make it a transparent one."

Dij blinked. "Yes, sir," he acknowledged. "I apologize, sir. My personal experiences with art are quite limited."

"It's very rare," the alien murmured, "the warrior who cares for the art. Most discard it as a frivolous waste of effort and something that accomplishes nothing." He fixed Dij with a hard gaze that raised the hairs on the nape of his brown neck. "Don't be so quick to dismiss it. Learn about art, Captain. Learn to appreciate art. At the stars' end, it might be all that we have left."

* * *

The Port Administrator stared blankly at his aide. "He said _what?_"

"Additional occupation forces!" Lampay Fay exclaimed. "The Empire is taking direct control!"

Tion Medon hissed between his sharp, crooked teeth. This was impossible. He'd been imprisoned before by the Imperial stormtroopers on charges of treason and conspiracy, charges that had eventually been disproved and he had been reinstated as Utapau's legitimate leader. They surely wouldn't try to remove him again…would they? "Outrageous," he fumed. "They could not possibly know -"

"But the local garrison!" Lampay protested. "It is just that! The local garrison is oppressive enough. For them to send _more_ - this cannot be!"

He sighed and brought a lined hand across his dark eyes. "This is the burying of Utapau as we once knew it, my old friend," the administrator said wearily. "We are finished. We can push back no longer, if what this 'Commander Thrawn' says is true."

"The Republic sent Obi-Wan Kenobi to liberate us," his aide sighed. "The Empire killed him and enslaved our world. Even that did not sate them."

"We will not go gently into their dominion," Tion vowed. "Ready our warriors and send our ships. Rally the populace of all the cities. I would not see my people give in so quietly."

"Yes!" Lampay Fay whispered fiercely, baring his long, yellowed rows of teeth in a wide grin.

"We will defy them. We will not submit to them, and we will deny them what spoils we have."

Lampay craned forward in acknowledgement and asked, "What of the garrison?"

"Destroy it," Tion said immediately. "Send all we have against it until the stormtroopers are ready for burial. Raid the armories and recapture our armaments. Distribute them to all trained in how to use them, and the rest give to our able-bodied citizens."

"At once, Administrator," Lampay said, voice tinged with an air of bitter triumph.

Tion smiled ruefully. "We may not survive this, Lampay. In fact, we shall not. But we will make _such an end_ - an end to be worthy of remembrance. We will draw sweat from this Commander Thrawn's brow before we are finished."

Lampay leaned forward again, bared his fangs in salute, and departed.

* * *

RN-117 glared through his dark visor at the crowded buildings of Pau City. After four long, arduous years, he was still stuck on this backwater world. There weren't even many other Humans; he hadn't seen any women at all in maybe five months, save for the holos of swimwear models from Alderaan, Corellia, Crucio, Sacorria, Talfaglio, Naboo, and Nubia that some of his squadmates had brought. He didn't know what in the nine hells he'd be thinking when he signed up to join the Grand Army of the Republic a week before Dooku had attacked Coruscant. Clearly, he'd been either out of his mind or drunk.

The clones in the garrison didn't seem to mind the isolation or the lack of women. They showed little interest in the swimwear model holos so coveted by the rest of them. They seemed hardened and distant, uninterested in anything but their duty. Some of the old volunteer soldiers from the days of the Clone Wars whispered stories of how the Kaminoan-made clones were so eerily focused and almost inhuman, and a few others claimed that they weren't quite so _cold_ before the rise of the Empire had occurred.

RN-117 didn't entirely trust the clones. He'd rather have two men born and raised in a lifestyle more akin to his own than five of the clones in any situation, be it a firefight or a remote policing job like this one. He didn't like them.

He squinted towards the downtown cityscape. A crowd seemed to be gathering; several crowds, actually, and beginning to join up. Rioters? Some department store having a huge blowout sale? It seemed out of character for either the Pau'ans or the Utai.

"Sir?" he signaled his superior's attention.

The noncommissioned officer strode to his side and raised a pair of macrobinoculars to his eyes, then muttered, "They're coming this way."

"We've got trouble!" RN-117 barked, loud enough for the rest of his squad proper to hear.

Officer Markel tilted his head in grim recognition. "Mixed-species crowd, apparently rioters, moving our way. Some of them appear to be armed. All men to battle stations!"

"Battle stations!" Commander Thyfal roared out, echoing Markel. The entire garrison seemed to come alive, and the white-armored stormtroopers rushed to arms and made ready.

The group of Utapauns approached, thousands strong as RN-117 could see when they continued to move closer. Angry yells and shouts issued forth from the mob. The stormtrooper clicked the safety on his blaster rifle off.

Markel turned to him and said urgently, "Take your squad down there. Tell them to disperse or be fired upon. If they want to negotiate, stall them and call me down."

"Don't think they're here to negotiate, sir," the soldier said grimly. "As you command." He saluted and motioned for the rest of his squad to follow him down the watchtower ladder.

As they marched through the opened gate, the crowd seemed to descend upon them, shrieking viciously. RN-117 shuddered involuntarily, and flinched when the heavy durasteel doors slammed shut behind him.

"What is the meaning of this?" he called, letting a trace of anger seep into his voice.

The response was more incoherent yelling, some of it in accented Basic and some in the Utapauns' varied and alien tongues, not the least of which made any sense. The general gist of it seemed to be shouting at them to leave or something of the sort, which was clearly not only ridiculous but impossible. They were stationed here.

"Tell me what you are doing here!" he shouted.

Maybe they were trying to. But the mob's roar grew only louder and more hostile.

"Disperse!" he screamed. "Or you will be fired upon!"

A blaster shot cracked out and a red bolt flashed through the air. RN-117 turned wildly to see one of his squadmates falling onto his knees, a smoking hole burned straight through his chestplate. He turned back to the crowd and began to cry out the order to attack, but suddenly he felt a searing pain in his belly just a fraction of a second before he heard the shot fired, and was sinking to the ground as if his bones had been gelatinized. Darkness overtook him blessedly before he saw the rest of his squad massacred as they were.

* * *

Dij boarded the assault shuttle, combat boots clanking on the metal deck and echoing off of it. Commander Thrawn's voice followed him in.

"We've forced their hand, Captain," he said calmly. "The Pau City garrison is reporting that they're being overrun, and we've entirely lost contact with garrisons in thirty-seven other areas including Canyones Port and De'pau Precinct."

"This was your intention, sir?" he called back, turning to look back at Thrawn.

"I didn't expect such a major resistance," the commander admitted. "I anticipated that there would be one. It was not my deliberate intention." He paused, then his eyes flashed with rare passion. "Your brethren are dying for the Imperial cause, Captain. Was that not the highest honor for which you were raised to do?"

The door slid closed, and Dij muttered to the metal blankness, "We were raised to die for the Republic, Commander, not to die for the Empire."

* * *

The whining screech of the TIE fighters diving down upon Utapau split the air, well audible even to Magis Puder, nestled in the snug cockpit of his P-38 starfighter. "Grey Dactillions, engage at will," he ordered. "Destroy them."

"Sir!" Dactillion Five cried. "Should we not target those shuttles?"

"Utapau needs us alive. We will free Utapau in the air," Magis decided. "Engage those fighters. The shuttles are no threat to us."

"Affirmative."

The bulky P-38s swung to engage the Imperial starfighters, coming in alongside the heavy transports to open fire into their tails. But the enemy pilots were too good and their fighters too agile; they maneuvered with the keening shriek of twin ion engines burning hot past them, though Dactillion Nine's fire hit home and scored the first kill of the day. The wreckage of TIE plummeted through the stratosphere.

"Stay locked on," Magis warned, aware that he was breaking his own order as the TIE fighter shook him off with a little too much ease for him to be comfortable with. Green laserfire abruptly stitched his wing, and he jerked the control stick and cut back on the throttle dexterously, pulling back behind the starfighter and then destroying it with a thunderous barrage of his own lasers.

"Good kill, Leader," Dactillion Two congratulated him.

He grunted in thanks, then dipped to port to slide beneath the belly of the descending shuttle to pop up behind another TIE fighter, but it was already curving out of the way, rolling port as well. It imitated his trick, cutting throttle to drop in behind him, and Magis drove his control stick forward to send his P-38 into a sharp dive, which he rolled out of a few hundred meters below. He pulled back up and banked steeply around back to attack the shuttle's escorts head-on. His dismayed ears beheld the death scream of Dactillion Three, whose sensor blip flashed out of existence less than a second later.

Unfortunately, rising into his frontal attack, Magis realized that the fighters were now on the offensive just an instant too late to avoid having his Utapaun P-38 shredded by the TIE laser bolts.

Yelling in shock and terror, he was jolted across the fighter's control panel, his restraining belt severed somehow, and his burning starfighter began to fall down, down, down, dropping through the atmosphere of Utapau like a rock dropped from a freighter. The ground rose up before his widened eyes, and just before he hit the hyperwinds that roared continually across the world's surface buffeted him sharply enough to the left that the whiplash smashed his head into the side of the cockpit and he blacked out.

* * *

"Move out!" Dij snapped as the ramp of the assault shuttle extended to strike the surface of the landing pad. Followed by his men, he ran down onto the pad, blaster blazing against the Pau'an rebel soldiers already moving to attack them. Their less quickly firing rifles brought only two of his stormtroopers down before the dozen or so of them were extinguished.

He stopped, raising a closed fist to indicate that his troops do likewise, and surveyed the area. They had landed in the right position, and the civic center - museum included - should be right to their…

"Follow me," he ordered, "and stay alert. Fire at anything that moves and isn't wearing stormtrooper armor."

"Yes, sir," the stormtroopers responded as one.

The platoon moved across the skywalks to join up with the rest of Dij's company, who had landed in separate ships. As they headed down a ramp leaning against the wall of the sinkhole in which Pau City was nestled, two dactillions with Pau'an warriors mounted upon them winged by, but were cut down by blasterfire before they could even fire a shot.

They were inexorable, marching around the sinkhole wall towards the civic center of Pau City. Rebelling Utapaun civilians were fair game as well; Utapau was a hostile world, and anyone raising arms against them was an enemy combatant. Two of the squads under Dij's command were armed with flame rifles, and he authorized their use against the ramshackle, densely clustered buildings with an almost cold lack of hesitation, though he ordered them not to slow down in their advance.

The stormtrooper company left torched Utapaun neighborhoods and districts behind them. They lost a few of their own to a cleverly executed ambush down a narrow streets before the grenades crashing through their windows blew the Utapaun rebels out through their own walls and showered the street with debris even as their targets vacated it, moving into a dead-on sprint down through it to open into a wider avenue. They were greeted by more civilian fighters, as well as a couple more fully equipped soldiers. Captain Dij figured that they must have recovered their weapons from the garrisons' armories where they had been stored, and he even encountered a few of the opposition members wielding E-11 and DC-15s rifles.

These were all mowed down fairly quickly. TIE ground attack fighters swept over the city at slow speeds, methodically seeding its downtown and its industrial sectors with light proton bombs, not damaging enough to collapse the platforms but destructive enough to take out whatever was on top of them, to clear paths for them. Dij led his men onwards through the twisting, winding roads and up back onto the skywalks latticing the outer fringes of the city where it met sinkhole cliff. His soldiers fanned out across the wide ones and bunched close over the narrow ones.

When they reached the civic center, though, they found it an unexpected fortress. While Dij had anticipated that it would be more heavily defended than the rest of the city, he hadn't thought that it would be ready to repel a siege. With a sigh of irritation, he opened a comm channel to the _Vengeance_ in orbit.

"_Vengeance_, come in _Vengeance_. This is Stormtrooper Captain Dij."

"Ah, Captain," said the voice of Commander Thrawn. "What do you report?"

"The civic center, sir," Dij replied. "We cannot breach it. It's heavily defended."

"I know," Thrawn said.

Dij frowned. "I mean it's really, really heavily defended, sir."

"This stands to reason," the commander acknowledged. "I have studied their art. They would focus their defenses even more heavily than most would on their most important and most sensitive areas."

"Sir, we cannot breach -"

"I have AT-HE walkers moving towards your position," Thrawn replied calmly. "Did you wonder why the bombing runs were concentrated over another part of your level?"

_That _had_ been rather odd_, Dij was forced to admit to himself. "Yes, sir," he said cautiously.

"They should be where you are within two standard minutes."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Of course, Captain," he returned, a note of reproof in his smoothly modulated voice. "I would never want my men to be improperly equipped. _Vengeance_, out."

"Thank you, sir," he murmured again to the silence. Perhaps he had misjudged the commander after all. He raised his voice to bark, "Walkers approaching to provide fire support! Hold positions!"

* * *

Tion Medon stared uncomfortably at the live holofeed from the civic center's security forces. The walled compound of subterranean buildings extended far back under the ground from the sinkhole cliff wall, and the company of stormtroopers now stood on the platform where Obi-Wan Kenobi had once landed to meet him, crouching next to the smoking ruin of the turbolaser turrets that his Utai engineers had hastily erected across it and the rest of the civic center's landing platforms.

Reports had come in. A squadron of All Terrain Heavy Enforcer walkers was crossing the rubble-strewn platforms and skywalks around the left side of the stormtroopers, moving towards them, and when they arrived, his defenses would be overwhelmed. More assault shuttles were landing atop the wreckage at other nearby docking bays, and more of the Imperial troops were moving to join them as well.

"Keep fighting," he ordered stoically into the comlink connected to Pau City's system of public announcement loudspeakers, even knowing as he spoke that many of those loudspeakers would no longer be relaying his messages, destroyed by the marauding occupation forces.

Lampay Fay looked forlornly at him. "I hoped it wouldn't end this way," he said quietly.

"I know," Tion whispered back, cutting the comlink's feed. "I did, too."

Utapau had pushed too hard. Now the Empire was striking back at them. _Perhaps_, Tion realized, _I should have waited until another Master Kenobi arrived to resist this new occupation_. But the Jedi were dead, and Separatist Commander Asajj Ventress's bloodthirsty demands had thus been finally fulfilled. The Empire and the Confederacy ran together in his mind. How different were they, really?

What had happened to eclipse the Republic and turn it into something so rotten and so foul?

He swallowed painfully and stared back towards the live feed, which wobbled and jerked over to show a full battle group of armored AT-HEs plodding towards that position before it suddenly went to static.

They had opened fire.

* * *

"For the Empire!" the rallying cry went up, Dij shouting just as loud even with resent for this New Order in the deepest and most guarded portion of his heart. The stormtroopers surged towards the gates in the cliffside under the massive bolts of the AT-HE cannons that shattered the ramparts and balconies upon which thousands of Utapaun soldiers had been standing guard, firing at the alien warriors on the ground and at the dactillion-mounted Pau'ans swooping down upon them.

Utapau had no chance left. One flip of the _shy'rta_ had the fortress' guard laid bare and they were suddenly so pathetically outgunned that if they had been smart, they would have surrendered unconditionally without another shot fired.

Apparently, though, if they challenged the weight of the Empire they were not so smart. Medon's people were ready to fall. Dij was ready to deliver this toppling blow.

It had begun with Thrawn, he thought. He'd cursed and railed when he'd heard that he was to be placed under the command of this upstart alien from the Unknown Regions. He'd eventually gained a grudging respect for his intelligence, although he still didn't like the man. He was no fighter, but a tactician, and his arrogance was almost flooring. He could see it in the way he spoke, accentuating his cultured air and being almost criminally polite, and in the way he adorned himself with luxury and then claimed that it helped his tactics.

But maybe it did.

He shot through the bodies of two Pau'an soldiers, then swung his rifle around to put a hole through the head of a stubby Utai. His men laid into the defenders with savage automatic fire. The gates were shorn through by a barrage of laserfire from the walkers supporting them from the rear, and the sense of triumph Dij felt as he crossed the threshold was reinvigorating. He'd not felt such a sweet sense of victory since the Clone Wars.

It was time.

* * *

Tion's guards stiffened, raising their rifles and aiming them at the door. The Port Administrator hefted his own weapon and cast a sideways look at the set-jawed Lampay Fay next to him, also pointing a blaster.

Blaster bolts thumped dully into the door. Visible dents appeared in it, and then suddenly a shower of painfully bright sparks sizzled out from the edges as the laser cutters got to work. Tion forced himself to not look away as the lights dazzled his eyes and sent weirdly immaterial floaters drifting across his vision.

Then the door exploded through, and the boots of stormtroopers came down upon it. Tion scored one hit, felling his target, but the blasterfire came to fill the room and the ancient Pau'an felt his body on fire, it seemed, and collapsing back across the wall, and then he felt nothing - nothing at all.

* * *

"Good game, Tion Medon," Thrawn murmured to the viewscreen image of Pau City on fire. In his hand was held the carved Mumuu skull faceplate of General Grievous. As Dij watched, he lifted it up to the light on the Star Destroyer bridge and studied it, his red eyes roving over the bone mask intently.

He swiveled his command chair around to face the stormtrooper captain. "You did well, Captain," he complimented. "It is a most fascinating piece of art, despite the charring."

"Yes, sir, it is." And in truth, Dij _could_ appreciate it in a sense. It may not have held much value in a firefight, but it was ornate and somehow elegant. He'd seen that faceplate many a time over the visage of General Grievous in the holos he'd seen of the Separatist Supreme Commander during the Clone Wars. Now, right before him, his commander was holding it, studying its carvings and grooves as if trying to ascertain something about the cyborg himself - and Dij supposed that he probably was.

"The Emperor will be pleased with it, I think," Thrawn mused. "I will have to contact him."

But Dij saw the mask of Grievous again after dismissing himself from the bridge to shower and prepare for their next mission, whenever it might come. The Emperor must have decided to let the commander who found it such an intriguing thing keep it, for when Thrawn invited him into his private gallery aboard the Star Destroyer _Vengeance_, it was resting neatly on a shelf next to the paintings.


End file.
